Thursday, July 27, 2006

The HR Initiative

Went to the State Bank of India today to extend my Student Loan for the STEP Program. They just did some formalities and processed my application. My total loan now is in the range of 6 lakhs.

That reminds me of the step taken some time back by the HR Minister to reduce the Fees at IIMs from Rs 3lakhs to Rs 30,000. The explanation given was that not every student is able to avail of the loan and hence such high fees discourage the poor students to apply for IIMs. Now I can see how blatant a lie it is.

In my loan processing nowhere did the bank had any dealing with my parents. Not that if they had, I would have been denied loan. I am from a relatively well to do, though not very rich family. But leaving myself aside nowhere in our bath or for that matter any other previous batch from any IIMs that I have heard of, has been denied education loan.

And it does sounds logical. With placements going so strong in all IIMs, a bank would be hitting itself if it denies education loan to an IIM student. And coming to the background of the people, there is a common perception that the students coming to IIMs are from the rich class. Most of us belong to middle class and there are some students of both high Socio-Economic and Low Socio-Economic classes. Though still it doesn't have as many poor students as the IITs but still IIMs cann't at all be called elite institutes.

There is another misconception regarding the facilities at IIMs, that I learned during my Internship. Some students from other MBA institutes(yup MBA institutes) believe IIMs to be some kinda 5-star hotel with AC in every room, FtF carpet etc. I simply fail to understand why do we need AC room for college students. Don't students shoould have frugal lifestyles. Specially in a relatively poor country like India. And it is not the IIM students who crib about all this but the outside intelligensia.

However in one respect I feel that IIMs are biased, against the students from non-English speaking background. The CAT paper has very high level of Verbal section and the Reading Comprehension is definitely not trivial. But lets face it, in todays world if you want to be a good manager, you have got to have good communication skills. And good communication skills do mean good English. But still I don't believe this barrier is unsurmountable and in all batches there are students from UP, Bihar, rajasthan etc who had Hindi speaking background.

So if any of the relatively low SEC student with not so good English, preparing for CAT is reading this, just pick up your Wren and Martin for grammar and few Ayn rand for RC. Dont worry about the finance. And please dont believe in the HR Minister, either the previous one or this one.


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4 Comments:

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